# `spaceless`

New in version 1.38: The `spaceless` filter was added in Twig 1.38.

Use the `spaceless` filter to remove whitespace between HTML tags, not whitespace within HTML tags or whitespace in plain text:

    {{
        "<div>
            <strong>foo</strong>
        </div>
        "|spaceless }}

    {# output will be <div><strong>foo</strong></div> #}

You can combine `spaceless` with the `apply` tag to apply the transformation on large amounts of HTML:

    {% apply spaceless %}
        <div>
            <strong>foo</strong>
        </div>
    {% endapply %}

    {# output will be <div><strong>foo</strong></div> #}

Note

The `apply` tag was introduced in Twig 2.9; use the `filter` tag with previous versions.

This tag is not meant to “optimize” the size of the generated HTML content but merely to avoid extra whitespace between HTML tags to avoid browser rendering quirks under some circumstances.

Caution

As the filter uses a regular expression behind the scenes, its performance is directly related to the text size you are working on (remember that filters are executed at runtime).

Tip

If you want to optimize the size of the generated HTML content, gzip compress the output instead.

Tip

If you want to create a tag that actually removes all extra whitespace in an HTML string, be warned that this is not as easy as it seems to be (think of `textarea` or `pre` tags for instance). Using a third-party library like Tidy is probably a better idea.

Tip

For more information on whitespace control, read the dedicated section of the documentation and learn how you can also use the whitespace control modifier on your tags.